Forward Strategist

Who we are

Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards.

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously.

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications.

The role

Forward Strategists at Helsing sit at the intersection of Product, Engineering, and Operations. Where engineering solves the technical problem, the Forward Strategist solves everything else: landing in chaos, finding the shape of the problem, and building a path through it. We deploy Forward Strategists against the highest-leverage problems in the company, where you will embed deeply in the work, take full ownership of outcomes, and leave behind systems and clarity that keep delivering long after you have moved on.

The day-to-day

• Take a poorly-defined problem, establish what it actually is, and build a structured path to resolution, setting direction through the ambiguity

• Deliver on that path end-to-end, prioritising ruthlessly, working across product, operations, commercial, hardware, legal, and technical domains, and owning the outcome until it becomes reality

• Make sound, well-evidenced calls under uncertainty, commit to them, and adapt when the facts change, without deferring decisions or sitting on the fence

• Bring people with you: build alignment across teams and stakeholders without relying on formal authority, communicate a clear vision of the outcome, and coach others toward it

• Leave the organisation permanently better, building processes, tooling, and institutional clarity that scale beyond what you can personally produce

You should apply if you

• Have landed in an ambiguous, high-stakes environment with no predefined strategy and turned it into a structured, delivered outcome

• Have built tooling, systems, or processes that outlasted your involvement and continued to generate value for the organisation

• Can reason from first principles into unfamiliar domains quickly, whether product, operations, commercial, or technical, and become the person others come to for the answer

• Have a track record of making clear, well-reasoned calls, backing them with evidence, and holding to them while remaining genuinely open to changing your view when the facts shift

• Have brought people with you without formal authority, built alignment across teams, and shaped how others think about a problem or outcome

Note: We operate in an industry where women, as well as other minority groups, are systematically under-represented. We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet all the listed qualifications; ability and impact cannot be summarised in a few bullet points.

Nice to Have

• Experience operating within or alongside a product or engineering function, with an understanding of how software development and deployment decisions get made

• Exposure to a high-ambiguity environment, whether as a founder or early operator, a consultant to growth-stage companies, or in a role where the job description mattered a lot less than the outcomes you owned

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields

• Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns.

• The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world.

• Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward.

• In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts.

• We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about.

What we offer

• Competitive salary and stock options (VSOP)

• Relocation support: up to €2,500 and 4 weeks temporary accommodation

• Learning: €500/£450 yearly allowance

• Health & wellness: gym membership and mental health support (Nilo.health)

• Social: regular company events and monthly social allowances

• Enhanced parental leave: 22 weeks fully paid for primary caregivers & 6 weeks for secondary caregivers

• Family support: 5 days of paid family emergency leave, 100% remote work option during pregnancy and phased return to work

These are the core benefits across all locations; there may be additional benefits in specific sites.

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.

Helsing's Candidate Privacy and Confidentiality Regime can be found here.